Effectiveness during an Outage:

Capital Investment Plan:

CWH spent $1.1 Million annually on Capital Investments in our current DSP timeframe from 2017 to 2022. CWH is proposing an annual Capital Investment Budget of $2.0 Million for the next 5-year (2025 to 2029) DSP with the higher investment mainly due to an extraordinary spend for a new Distribution Station build in Fergus.

Aside from the planned new station build a large portion of our Capital Investment Budget is directed to the replacement of poles in poor and very poor condition, and a large truck replacement.

CWH customers experience outages for reasons such as loss of supply from our transmitter (Hydro One), adverse weather, planned outages so CWH can proactively improve our system, and defective equipment. The table below shows the annual statistics for outage causes.

Some power outages can be avoided by replacing aging equipment before it becomes defective and fails. This is called a proactive replacement strategy, and CWH has accounted for this within the draft DSP and investment projections.

CWH’s Reliability is excellent compared to Ontario’s industry average. Our customers have fewer outages, and our responsiveness keeps outage duration to a minimum.

Our approach to the next 5-year DSP plan is to maintain the current excellent reliability and complete similar projects with minimal rate increases, which are mainly due to inflation and increased material costs.

Another reason for CWH’s positive reliability and customer service is our Distribution maintenance program which falls under the Operations, Maintenance & Administration (OM&A) budget. CWH’s maintenance programs include tree trimming, transformer inspections and repair, Station inspections, and pole testing to name a few.

The projected total Operations & Maintenance spend for 2025 is approximately $955,300. Through the Distribution System Planning process, the projected annual increase for OM&A budgets will be inline with inflation. This will allow us to continue running the current operations and maintenance programs that help us keep outages to a minimum, poles, transformers, and other equipment safe for workers and the public, as well as a continued high level of customer service.

Electronic Billing:

Producing paper bills each month comes with a considerable cost in postage, paper, supplies and equipment. If we switched all of our customers to electronic billing, where you received your bill via e-mail each month, certain costs would be eliminated.

Grid Modernization:

The electricity industry is evolving. Smart devices for homes and business such as internet connected thermostats and switches, renewable solar generation, and battery backup power supplies are examples of new technologies. Electric vehicles are becoming more common and connecting them on a large scale to the electric grid will need to be done with load control and 2-way flow capabilities. CWH will need to adapt to these technologies and customer expectations.

Final Comments: